Sunset Shimmer navigated the tables of the restaurant, ignoring the weight of the food she was carrying. Days of meditation had allowed her to achieve this, to say nothing of all the table-waiting lessons Pinkie Pie had been nice enough to give her. While she still envied her friend for being skilled enough to use skates to get around quickly, she had to admit she was finally starting to get into the groove regarding her responsibilities at Sunset Sushi.
Sunset chuckled to herself, reminiscing on her good fortune. Having the same name as the franchise she now worked for certainly won her points during the interview. Of course, having a good work ethic, a positive attitude, and a recently-discovered love for Neighponese food helped her the rest of the way. She'd make assistant manager yet—all she needed to do was keep impressing the customers and her bosses, as she already had been over the last few months.
"Here you go," she said, placing several plates and bowls on the table of the family she'd just approached. "One shoyu ramen, potato croquettes, six Fillydelphia rolls, and one vegetable tempura platter. Enjoy!"
Sunset smiled and bowed slightly as the family expressed their thanks, then wandered towards the restaurant entrance. After making sure the restaurant had enough attendants to be fine without her, she slipped outside to a nearby bench and wiped her brow.
She took off her sneakers, massaging her feet through her socks. The new footwear Rainbow Dash had given her certainly helped make shifts easier, but even so, over the last week, something still felt off, so she had Rainbow put in another special order. She was supposed to meet Rainbow here in a matter of minutes. She only hoped that Rainbow had been able to come through.
Sunset looked up. There she was now, tearing across the floor as if her leg joints were governed by gear shifts instead of flesh and blood. Being a multi-sports star, it made sense, but it still never failed to impress Sunset. She waved as her friend approached. "Hey, Rainbow," she said.
"Hey, Sunset," Rainbow said, taking a long, thin box out of her store bag. "Your order totally came in today! One pair of Avantgarde comfort insoles!"
"Sweeeeeet," Sunset said, opening the box. After spending a few minutes transplanting the insoles of her sneakers, she slipped her feet back inside... and instantly felt herself standing on a cloud. "Ohhhhh, my gosh. That's the stuff." She looked up at Rainbow, her eyes gleaming. "Rainbow, thank you so much! This is going to make shifts fly by."
"Awesome!" Rainbow said. "Glad to hear it. And hey, if your feet still get too tired, there's always driving duty, right?" Rainbow thumbed over to the converted miniature RV that stood to the side of Sunset Sushi's entrance, behind its own garage door.
Both girls walked towards it. "I still think it's way cool that you get to drive that thing around for half the day and cook," Rainbow added.
"The reality doesn't quite live up to the legend," Sunset said. "It's still a mini-truck that needs to handle food, so I always have to be extra careful behind the wheel. Sometimes it feels like I can't let it go any faster than golf cart speed. I'd almost prefer we used a delivery motorcycl—"
The two were interrupted by a loud, gruff shout, in a language different from their own, but also in a voice Sunset easily recognized. Sunset Sushi's TV sets were off when she left—someone must have turned them back on.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rainbow perk up as well.
In tandem, the two darted back inside the restaurant, and looked up at one of its televisions, to see two figures standing in the middle of a grassy park. A large, orange, horned ogre faced down a much smaller, glasses-wearing, pink-skinned teenage girl wearing a private school uniform.
The girl was down on her knees, panting for breath. By the visible scuffs on her face and blouse, and her pained expression, she'd clearly just gone through a large amount of emotional and physical stress in a small amount of time. Still, she avoided collapsing outright.
"Evilogre!" Sunset and Rainbow said in stereo—then looked at each other in surprise, before looking back at the screen. Domestic-language subtitles appeared at the bottom, allowing everyone watching to follow along.
"You really think you have the power to beat me, Readmore? I have all of your so-called 'friends', and you, right where I want you, and you've got no way of stopping me this time!" Evilogre pointed to two of the girl's classmates, trapped in midair-floating bubbles beside him, banging against their barriers and visibly shouting for help through the bubbles' soundproofing.
The pink girl—the aforementioned 'Readmore'—struggled to stand. She looked up at the ogre defiantly.
"Not that you have any reason to try," Evilogre continued, glowering. "Especially now that you've seen your so-called 'friends'' true colors? Now you truly know what we've all known for ages—they never liked you! No one will ever like you for who you are!"
The girl's struggles ceased, and she slumped onto her hands and knees.
"He's right," she said to herself, via voiceover. "Why am I even here? I gave so much to those girls, tried to be everything they wanted, even when I knew it wasn't me—and for all my efforts, they spit in my face. What if Evilogre's right about everything? What if all this 'friendship' business is, for me, really just a waste of time?"
She clenched her teeth, and a fist.
"Or what if this is the lesson?"
Readmore stood up, looked at the trapped girls, and scoffed. "You might be right about these girls, Evilogre. I certainly don't need them now, any more than they might have ever needed me."
She closed her eyes.
"But I can't say I never did. Whether or not it was a farce, they were there for me in some of my weakest moments. They may have broken my heart now, but I can't hate them completely. But I also can't give them any more of myself, either.
"Which means I still have a world's worth of love left in me," she said, looking to the heavens. "And I'll save that love for someone who knows how to honor it. It could be days, months, years before I find such a person." She looked at Evilogre with defiant eyes. "But no matter how long it takes, it'll take way more than what you've got to snuff that love out!"
A pink aura swirled around her.
"In the meantime, these are human beings who still have the right to live," she said, pointing at Evilogre with renewed determination. "Nothing except the passage of time, is allowed to decide their fate! Certainly not you!"
A gleaming ivory wand, with multiple multicolored jewels embedded within, appeared in Readmore's non-pointing hand.
"What... what is..." she said, looking at it with wide eyes. "I guess that was a test?"
"She's got a Goddess Wand? She's gonna do it?" Sunset and Rainbow said, once again, in stereo, as they clung to each other in anticipation.
Readmore tossed the wand skyward, shut her eyes, and shouted at the top of her lungs.
"PRISM CHANGE!"
The multi-colored jewels embedded in the wand shone rays of colored light down on Readmore, heralding a transition to a brand-new stock footage transformation sequence, complete with majestic orchestral music.
"Oh, my gooooooosh," Rainbow Dash said, hands on her cheeks, as Readmore floated through a multicolored cyberscape made of circuits and binary numbers. "The latest episode of Rainbow Power actually aired today?"
One of the lights from the wand penetrated the cyberscape, and stripped Readmore of all her clothing save for an opaque pink nightgown.
"Yeah," Sunset said, looking at listings on her phone. "Looks like it just dropped on Sweetroll. But..." She turned to face Rainbow. "You... sound like you watch! Do you really watch?"
"You kidding? For years!" Rainbow replied, as new white and magenta-toned boots and gloves appeared on Readmore, fitting themselves perfectly. "I thought they were skipping this episode until next week!"
The camera swirled around Readmore, as a flowing white blouse and pink dress stitched itself gradually down her frame.
"Yeah, so did I," Sunset said. "I guess we got bad info! Good thing, though, because I was on the edge of my seat last week when Evilogre revealed that Readmore's friends were all a ruse! Not to mention beside myself with grief."
"I know, right?" The wand stopped spinning in midair, and Readmore's purple hair swirled itself into an impeccable shoulder-length cut. "I like going from sad lows to happy highs as much as the next girl, but—okay." Rainbow held her hand to her heart, and caught her breath, before asking, "When did you start? And how?"
"Just this year," Sunset said. The cyberscape faded away to reality, and Readmore appeared in the sky, falling towards the ground, and catching the wand in the process. "My managers have daughters who watch this a whole bunch through simulcasts, and they played it on the sets one day. Wouldn't you know it, it brings and keeps customers. So, I figured I'd sit down on one of my days off and try a few episodes for myself just to see what the fuss was all about.
"And now..." Sunset stared, mesmerized at just how cool the action was, to say nothing of how beautiful, at the same time. "Now I can't stop. I mean, look at this stuff! Along with, you know, the heart-melting stories."
"Yep," Rainbow said with a sigh of agreement. "That's how they get ya. That's how they got me."
"I believe it!" Sunset pointed to the screen. "What's worse is that I totally want that wand now." She stepped back in embarrassment. "I... may have wanted it for the last several months, actually."
"Comes out next month," Rainbow said. "You can still preorder it. That's what I did."
"Oh my gosh!" Sunset gasped, her face lighting up like a Hearth's Warming tree. "Seriously?"
The transformation sequence ended, and Readmore landed flawlessly on the grass. Where there was once a meek private school student, now stood a determined girl wearing an elaborate magenta and white ensemble—blouse, skirt, boots, and gloves—all decked in flashing lights and circuitry. A too-long green scarf, wrapped around her neck, flapped in the wind.
Translucent blue-lensed glasses appeared in her hands. She placed them over her eyes, taking a few seconds to marvel at the heads-up display they afforded.
"The light of love shines inside me forever!" a transformed Readmore said, powerposing and pointing at the ogre with defiant eyes. "Prism Pink, on stage! "Prepare for judgment!"
Sunset and Rainbow stood, gaping at the screen as Evilogre roared and rushed towards Prism Pink. Prism Pink crouched, unmoving, until Evilogre was close enough to raise his axe—whereupon Prism Pink met his chin with a rising uppercut, trailed by pink sparkles, in slow motion.
Sunset and Rainbow's gapes slowly morphed into slackened grins. "She's gonna kick his butt so hard," Rainbow whispered...
...just as the show gave way to a commercial for the toy version of the wand that both girls had just witnessed. They continued to stare, transfixed, at a young girl play-acting Prism Pink's signature poses while the wand itself performed all the lights and music they'd just seen and heard over the last minute—minus the clothes-changing, of course.
Sunset and Rainbow's grins slackened even more. Slight bits of drool formed at the edges of their mouths.
They looked at each other, then darted out of the restaurant, and around to the back of the truck, leaning on to it and catching their breath.
"Sunset," Rainbow said.
"I know," Sunset replied.
"Sunset," Rainbow said again.
"I know!" Sunset replied again, clawing her hands in front of herself. "We're already magical girls! Why is working on us?"
"Because we don't get to be magical girls like that," Rainbow said. "We don't see our awesome transformation sequences, we don't get evil ogres to punch, and nothing against our geodes, but they're not Goddess Wands!" Rainbow said, still panting.
"Are the toys always like that?" Sunset asked.
"No! This is totally new! They just used to be painted pieces of plastic! Now they're electronic, and they do all the lights and sounds just like the planes I had as a kid except way cooler because it's all exactly like on the show—" Rainbow managed amidst heavy breaths.
"I know, I know, I know, it's amazing!" Sunset squealed. "Okay. Okay. Let's calm down. We are mature, grown ladies," she continued, standing up and straightening her Sunset Sushi uniform. "We're allowed to like elegant toys with flashing lights and sounds. Heck, Twilight plays with her science robots all the time."
Rainbow "pfft"ed. "Yeah, but she keeps trying to tell us she's 'bettering society through machine advancement' or whatever whenever we call her out on that stuff."
"Oh, yeah, no, that part's total denial. She's totally playing with toys, too. Just..." Sunset sucked in her breath. "Not with toys aimed at girls a third her age, for a show aimed at girls a third our age." She huffed.
"How long did it take you to get over the fact that this show is aimed at girls a third our age?" Rainbow asked.
Sunset rolled her eyes and snickered. "You're assuming I ever did."
Rainbow sighed. "Yeah. Same. I... might have been too scared to try and get anyone into this with me. Just between us, you're the first person I thought of who I thought would totally be into it, but..."
"But what if I didn't think it was awesome?" Sunset finished.
Rainbow looked at the ground. "Yeah. Thanks for finding it by accident."
"Well, it looks like we've both learned a lesson today," Sunset said. "At least, I hope we have."
"What do you mean?" Rainbow asked.
"What I mean is, it's only been five minutes since I found out you watched Rainbow Power, and I already feel a lot happier that I do. Instead of embarrassed, like I always was. Also meaning, I think we should share what we love with our friends, especially if we think they'll like it too. How about we promise to do that from now on?"
A smile spread across Rainbow's face. "Yeah. I'm cool with that."
"Good." Sunset took Rainbow's hands in hers. "Because I know from experience that whatever Rainbow Dash likes, is more than awesome enough for Sunset Shimmer to learn about."
Rainbow was good at hiding blushes, but Sunset was good at finding them. "O-okay," Rainbow said, coming back to her senses. "So, if we're doing the whole fangirl-to-fangirl thing, then I need to show you something. You on break yet?"
"I can be." Sunset took out her phone and typed a text to her manager. "And I am, as of right now."
"Cool," Rainbow said. "Got anywhere with a TV that's not in full view of the universe?"
Sunset walked to the back of the Sunset Sushi truck and opened it, revealing a lounge room, complete with Neighponese interior decorating, a recliner just barely big enough to fit both girls, and a flat-screen television propped on a table in front of it. Rainbow gasped at the sight. "If I didn't really love my job..."
Sunset giggled.
"Anyway." Rainbow stepped inside taking out her phone. As Sunset followed behind her, she took out her phone. "So yeah. If you're just coming in on this season of Rainbow Power, you should definitely check out last year's."
"Right," Sunset said. "They change teams every year, don't they?"
"Uh huh! This year's Friendship Forever, but last year's, Never Give Up, is still my favorite!" She grinned, showing teeth. "Course, that might have been because the sports girl got to be the leader for once."
"Of course," Sunset said, crossing her arms with a smile.
"Anyway, there's this rich violinist girl who's been working for the bad guys up until halfway through the season. She keeps attacking them, even when the Prisms beat the monster-of-the-week. The whole time, though, the main character senses that maybe violin girl doesn't really wanna work for evil, sooooo she keeps trying to be her friend."
"Refusing to give up," Sunset said.
"You got there." Rainbow nodded. "Since secret identities are a thing, neither of them knows who the other is. But even so, one day the violin girl has to make a choice between Prism Cyan—the sporty one—who kept reaching out to her, and the bad guys she's been working for."
Sunset shifted back and forth. "What does she choose?"
"Rainbow's grin widened. "Let's just say she takes a leap of faith. The season ends with six Prisms instead of five, and it turns out the sixth was their classmate all along."
"That's awesome!" Sunset said, before sobering. "Are... are there any problems with the other girls trusting her? You know. After everything she did?"
"They address that later. Short version: she proves herself. Turns out she was always good. She just had to learn for herself what her own personal brand of good looked like."
Sunset smiled, her heart warming. "I love this show already."
"Yeah," Rainbow said. "Turns out it's pretty good."
"Is that what you wanted to show me now?" Sunset asked.
"Yep. We've got just enough than time to watch Prism Phoenix's face turn episodes before we go back on shift, if you're game."
"And then some!" Sunset said.
"Awesome!" Rainbow said, turning the TV on, and pointing her phone towards it. "Gimme a sec, I'll cast it. It's a 2-parter."
The two sat side by side on the recliner and watched the climax of the exact tale Rainbow had outlined play out in front of them. It was everything Rainbow had promised, and then some—epic staredowns, heartfelt pleas for friendship, and knock-down, drag-out fights laced with sparkling pyrotechnics and glittering hearts. After the first episode was over, Sunset turned to her friend. "Hey. Rainbow?"
"Yeah?" Rainbow said, munching on a thin chocolate-coated cracker snack out of a box which had been nearby.
"Well, first, you're going to have to pay for that. But second..." Sunset chose her words carefully. "You ever wonder about the things this episode, and even today's, talked about a bunch? Things like... I don't know. Chance and fate, and which outcomes you can decide?"
Rainbow blinked.
"I mean, think about the odds it took to get us to sit here," Sunset continued. "You had to arrive at the exact time we agreed on, that TV had to come on just as we were talking, and I even took a raincheck on today's park walk with Twilight. I wonder what that led to for her," she said in a faraway voice.
Rainbow shrugged. "Yeah, sure, but if you take it all the way back, those odds required you running away to our world through an actual magic mirror. And now, from that, we're magical girls too. How far back do you wanna go on this? How far can you go before you lose your mind over it?"
"Yeah," Sunset said. "That's a good point."
"The people who write this show have it easy," Rainbow said, gesturing to the television. "They get to say what happens to the world and characters in it, just by making stuff up. And the characters in it don't know what's going on. For them, it's their lives. But us? We're real, and what happens in real life is way crazier than anything some TV show can dream up. Again, portal to magic pony world.
"But we still gotta deal with it anyway. And we do." Rainbow reclined, wrapping her arm around Sunset, and looking at her with a smile. "I exercise my right to not think too hard about it, and just live life how I want to. You got a lot cooler and less uptight when you decided to do the same thing. I'd've been your friend either way, but not gonna lie—you're a lot easier like this."
Sunset smiled back, sinking into Rainbow's embrace. "I learned from the best, I guess."
"It's true. I am pretty awesome."
Sunset scoffed. "I meant all of my awesome friends, you doof."
"Right. Of course, you did." After a few moments, Rainbow added, "You stay awesome, too."
The two continued to watch the show, relaxing into each other.